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"You will not dismiss your Soul lest it go forth..." [taking
something with it].
For wheresoever it go, it will be in some definite condition, and
its going forth is to some new place. The Soul will wait for the
body to be completely severed from it; then it makes no
departure; it simply finds itself free.
But how does the body come to be separated?
The separation takes place when nothing of Soul remains bound up
with it: the harmony within the body, by virtue of which the Soul
was retained, is broken and it can no longer hold its guest.
But when a man contrives the dissolution of the body, it is he
that has used violence and torn himself away, not the body that
has let the Soul slip from it. And in loosing the bond he has not
been without passion; there has been revolt or grief or anger,
movements which it is unlawful to indulge.
But if a man feel himself to be losing his reason?
That is not likely in the Sage, but if it should occur, it must
be classed with the inevitable, to be welcome at the bidding of
the fact though not for its own sake. To call upon drugs to the
release of the Soul seems a strange way of assisting its
purposes.
And if there be a period allotted to all by fate, to anticipate
the hour could not be a happy act, unless, as we have indicated,
under stern necessity.
If everyone is to hold in the other world a standing determined
by the state in which he quitted this, there must be no
withdrawal as long as there is any hope of progress.
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